If the sentence is carried out, it will be Virginia's first execution of a woman in nearly 100 years.

By Alan Gomez, USA TODAY

There is little doubt over the guilt of Teresa Lewis, a Virginia woman who pleaded guilty to capital murder after hiring two men to kill her husband and 25-year-old stepson in their sleep in 2002.

The debate is over her punishment. Lewis, 41, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Thursday.

Last week, Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell denied a plea for clemency, but Lewis' former chaplain, her attorneys and more than 6,500 supporters who signed an online petition are pressing him for a last-minute reprieve.

Lewis would be the first woman since 1912 to be put to death in Virginia, and the 50th nationwide since 1900, according to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.

Prosecutors argued for the death penalty based on her role in the scheme eight years ago. They say she used sex and money to get Matthew Shallenberger and Rodney Fuller to carry out the murder for a share of her stepson's $250,000 life insurance.

The two gunmen were sentenced to life in prison.

Alleged mastermind dead

Her attorneys are basing their push for clemency on Shallenberger's post-trial statements that he was the mastermind. He killed himself in prison in 2006.

James Rocap, Lewis' attorney, says she has an IQ of 72, just above the legal definition of mentally retarded, while Shallenberger's IQ was 113. Rocap said that made Lewis a prime target for Shallenberger, who wanted to become a contract killer in New York.

"The only reason I had sex with the mother was ... to get her to 'fall in love' with me so she would give me the insurance money," he wrote to a friend after his trial.

Lewis' options are running out. An appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court is pending. McDonnell reviewed the case, including Shallenberger's letter, and decided not to grant clemency.

Women commit about 10% of murders nationwide but face about 1% of executions, according to Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment. That's not based on bias toward women, he said, but the nature of crimes they commit.

Prosecutors generally seek the death penalty in murders that involve long-term planning, torture, rape or other aggravating circumstances.

"Although women are capable of that, that's rare," Dieter said. "It's usually a one-time thing. It's not a life of crime or a series of crimes."

Lewis met Shallenberger and Fuller in 2002 and began planning the murders, according to court records. On Oct. 30, 2002, the two men entered her home through an unlocked back door, woke her, told her to go into the kitchen and then killed both men with shotgun blasts.

According to police, Lewis waited 45 minutes before calling 911 to report that intruders had killed her husband and stepson. When a Pittsylvania County sheriff's deputy entered the home, Julian Lewis was still alive and told the deputy, "My wife knows who done this to me."

Lewis soon admitted to police that she had paid Shallenberger to kill her husband and stepson. She pleaded guilty, avoiding a jury trial, and was sentenced to death.

Arguments for clemency

Lynn Litchfield, a former chaplain at the Fluvanna Correctional Center, met with Lewis there three times a week for six years, speaking and holding hands through the food slot in her cell door. She said Lewis used her Christian faith to get through her incarceration and began comforting other inmates with Bible readings.

In a letter to McDonnell, Litchfield did not ask for Lewis to be pardoned but said she should be spared the death penalty. Litchfield contends that Lewis was conned into the murder plot and has shown strong remorse.

"Many women would report to me how sweet she was, how helpful she was, how she listened, and how she pointed them in the right directions with their own faith journeys," she wrote.

Litchfield said that when she heard last week that McDonnell had denied Lewis' request for clemency, "I hung up the phone and I sobbed."

Steve Northup of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty said his reasons for opposing Lewis' executions go beyond his group's opposition to the death penalty. He cited her low IQ, dependent-personality disorder, addiction to painkillers at the time of the murders and non-violent past as reasons she should be spared.

"It seems to me that even if you were a supporter of capital punishment, there are reasons to oppose this particular execution," Northup said.

Pittsylvania Commonwealth Attorney David Grimes and Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli have fought against any reprieve for Lewis.

Cuccinelli said in a court filing the sentence was justified for reasons including "her pitiless, utter lack of human feeling in standing by while her husband and stepson were shot multiple times with a shotgun and her husband died a slow, agonizing death," and "her ruthless, remorseless attempts to obtain the money immediately after by forging her dead husband's signature."

'A winner either way'

Kathy Clifton, daughter and sister of the victims, dismissed the idea Teresa Lewis was not behind the murders.

"I think that the penalty that was handed down was just," Clifton told the Richmond Times Dispatch. "I think (the judge) did what the Lord would have him do."

Rocap said Lewis has achieved a measure of peace.

"She has said that she will be a winner either way," Rocap said. "She will either be able to live and continue her prison ministry, which is what she wants to do. Or she says she'll be walking into the hands of her God."

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